


to fight aloud is very brave

by ShanaStoryteller



Series: where thou art, that is home [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abusive Father, Derek is an artist, F/M, M/M, Pre-Slash, drunk teenagers, pre-Isaac/Cory, so many isaac feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShanaStoryteller/pseuds/ShanaStoryteller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac gets pulled into their crazy, but he loves it, really.</p>
<p>"He expects them to forget about him, now that their latest supernatural disaster isn't tied up in his dad's graveyard. <br/>Two days later it's Christmas Eve, and he hasn't managed to wake on Christmas morning not in the freezer in years. He's huddled on top of his bed with his legs pulled to his chest, waiting, because it's still morning, he has hours more until it will get really bad.<br/>His phone buzzes from a number he doesn't recognize. <br/>Hey, I know it's Christmas Eve and all, but I was wondering if you'd meet me for lunch? The diner on main street at 1?<br/>Ok, he sends back, figures it's Stiles, and even if it's not, it's better than staying here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	to fight aloud is very brave

**Author's Note:**

> so hi everyone! I'm about 10,000 words into the sequel sequel to hittwf, and I'm not going to lie guys, so far is just fluff and cuddling. I have a serious plot that will make an appearance, but for right now what we've go is fluff an cuddling.   
> anyway, today I was working on a scene detailing Isaac's home life, and it was just getting superawkward where I had it, and I was just like, "This is shit that should have been taken care of MONTHS BEFORE why is it happening NOW" so I guess you guys get interlude fic yay?  
> *hides under rock, because as per usual, I wrote this in few hours, gave it once over, and am calling it good enough*  
> It's about 3 am in Spain, so I hope you guys like it, I'm off to bed!

_To fight aloud, is very brave -_

_But gallanter, I know_

_Who charge within the bosom_

_The Calvary of Wo -_

_Who win, and nations do not see -_

_Who fall - and none observe -_

_Whose dying eyes, no Country_

_Regards with patriot love -_

_We trust, in plumed procession_

_For such, the Angels go -_

_Rank after Rank, with even feet -_

_And Uniforms of snow._

~ Emily Dickinson

 

He expects them to forget about him, now that their latest supernatural disaster isn't tied up in his dad's graveyard.

Two days later it's Christmas Eve, and he hasn't managed to wake on Christmas morning not in the freezer in years. He's huddled on top of his bed with his legs pulled to his chest, waiting, because it's still morning, he has hours more until it will get really bad.

His phone buzzes from a number he doesn't recognize.

_Hey, I know it's Christmas Eve and all, but I was wondering if you'd meet me for lunch? The diner on main street at 1?_

_Ok_ , he sends back, figures it's Stiles, and even if it's not, it's better than staying here.

 

It's not Stiles, and Isaac wishes he'd worn jeans without holes in them, or something, because Cordelia Hale makes him feel like Lydia Martin does, except without the soul crushing fear.

"Isaac!" she waves, and some people turn. He hunches as he walks over, because girls like her don't go out in public with guys like him. "Hey, sorry I dragged you out here, but they have chocolate pancakes all day, have you tried them?"

He shakes his head, feels himself relax at her wide smile. Her sweater has a bleach stain near the end of the sleeve, and he doesn't know why that makes him feel better, but it does. "I like the pumpkin ones."

"Solid choice," she grins, swirling her spoon in the coffee she's already ordered, "Did you get that Holly?"

Isaac startles, sees the waitress hovering by their table. "One order of chocolate and pumpkin pancakes each - what would you like to drink?"

"Water's fine," he says, and when the waitress walks away he asks, "Isn't her name Margret?"

"Not during the holidays," she says, and her smile dims just a little. "Look, there's a couple of things I want to talk to you about, but first things first - I'm sorry, we all are. There was a lot going on, with Stiles dying-"

"Stiles is dead?" Isaac demands, a little rough because he feels like his chest is seizing.

"Oh, no!" she leans across the table to wrap one of his hands in hers, "No, I'm sorry, that was a shitty way to put that. I mean, yes, he died, but he came back. So it's okay, more or less. Wow, we all agreed Stiles would be crap at this, but really, I'm not much better."

"You're doing fine," he says, even though he's confused as hell, but she squeezes his hand, so he figures it was the right thing to say.

She runs her thumb over one his forever bruised fingertips, and he flinches. He always makes sure to keep his fingernails as short as possible, because he knows he'll regret it later, but it doesn't stop him from panicking, so instead he gets bruised, bloody fingertips. "Later," she sighs, pressing lightly on one of the bruises, "but, honestly, we all owe you an explanation, and I'm here to give you one, as long as it takes."

"It's Christmas Eve," he says.

She shrugs, "I'm already missing family dinner, which my father is extremely jealous about. I have all night."

Eventually Margaret kicks them out, but she sends them off with huge to go mugs of hot chocolate. They curl into the backseat of Cory's Jaguar, wrapped in a blanket from the trunk, because this new world has so much to it, so much he wants to know. She's just gotten to the part about their house catching fire when he drifts off.

He wakes up Christmas morning, and his neck is killing him. He's twisted partly on the backseat, with his long legs somehow bunched on the floor. Cory's curled into his chest, his chin is on top of her head, and his arm is around her waist.

His father is going to give him hell for this later, but for now he tightens his grip and relishes at the sunlight shining against his eyelids.

 

At nine thirty on New Year's Eve he get a text from another number he doesn't recognize.

_party at lyds ill pick you up in 20_

It's quite possible he stares at the text in disbelief for twenty minutes, because the next thing he knows there's a car horn beeping obnoxiously loud outside. He bolts past his dad before he can ask any questions, and slams the door behind him. He's pretty sure his dad cares too much about appearances to chase him, but he throws himself into the backseat of Stiles's Jeep anyway, and nearly lands on top of Danny Mahealani, whom he's maybe shared half a dozen words with, ever.

"Where's the fire?" Stiles asks, but he's already pulling back onto the street faster than the Sheriff's son probably should, glancing into his rearview mirror, so Isaac figures he doesn't have to answer.

"Hey, dude," Scott turns from the front seat to grin at him, "Nice to finally meet you, Stiles has been bitching about  you not wanting to play with us for like, months. So glad you gave in."

Stiles squawks in what Isaac thinks is offense, but Scott and Danny are laughing, and he almost forgets to panic until they pull up to Lydia's house. He can't breath for a moment, his discomfort with how much he doesn't belong with these people nearly a physical thing.

"Isaac!" Cory's just pulled up, Cora in the front and Derek squished in the back with what looks like a metric ton worth of alcohol. "Help us get this in, will you?"

"Sure," he says, relieved, and doesn't even startle much at the way Stiles launches himself at Derek and gets swung around for his trouble, even if the older man does roll his eyes. When he gets into her house, Lydia smiles at him and directs him to the kitchen where Jackson seems to be putting the finishing touches on the jungle juice.

"Hey, Isaac," Jackson takes the bottles and sets them in the counter, and he's seen this cautious side to Jackson before, because he may be shit at actually being nice, but Jackson's not too bad at being kind.

"Hey," he says, as always unsure how to react to the one person who realized what his life was like, and then tried to _help_. "So, how long have you known about it all?"

"Almost a year," he says, "they're fucking nuts, right?"

Isaac lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, "Yeah."

Neither Derek nor Cora can get drunk, but seem to be amused enough by the rest of them that it doesn't seem to matter much. Drunk Lydia just want to make out with Jackson, who doesn't exactly have a problem with that, and Danny and Scott try to out drink the other - Scott seems to be winning, even though he keeps giggling at nothing. It's possible, however, that he's giggling at Stiles, who not only yells when he's drunk, but cuddles. Derek seems all too happy to indulge him, letting Stiles lay in between his legs and against his chest while he babbles something about magical disappearing tattoos, and possibly something about giving Derek a tattoo. Isaac has more important things to focus on, because for most of the night he finds himself sandwiched between Cora and Cory and, wow, what a wonderful place to be.

They watch the ball drop, and midnight strikes. Lydia and Jackson have been kissing for the past twenty minutes and Scott grabs Stiles face to give him a kiss that might possibly include a little tongue. Derek rolls his eyes and kisses Danny sweet and simple, but it makes the younger boy blush all the way down.

Cory and Cora both try to crawl into his lap, and end up of giving him kisses all over his face, a couple of which even manage to land on his mouth.

 

"Faster!" Mrs. Hale snaps, and Isaac groans, putting in a burst of energy that makes him almost even with Stiles and Danny, who thankfully look as tired and red faced as he feels. Jackson's a good two feet ahead of them, through some inhuman place of willpower.

"Is she," he gasps, "always like this?"

Danny and Stiles share a look, and nod. Isaac almost regrets agreeing to this, except he's got people in his speed dial, people who drag him places to hang out, who roll their eyes but will totally sit through really bad rom-coms with him, and it's this brand new exhilarating feeling, to be wanted.

 

"You haven't been home much lately."

Isaac keeps his eyes lowered to his plate, pushing around the pieces of chicken he can't bring himself to eat. "I've been with friends."

His dad laughs, leaning back in his chair. Isaac flinches. "Now, son, you know how I feel about lying."

"I'm not lying," his hand clenches into a fist around his fork, and he has to force it to relax, "They're from school. We hang out."

"Friends from school," and his voice is almost kind, but too close to pitying, "you haven't had any friends from school before, why would you have them now?"

He doesn't have an answer to that, unsure as to why he's caught this group's attention, unsure as to why they've let them into their inner circle without hesitation, but they have and as long as they want him, he's not going anywhere.

"See," his father stands, taking his silence as an admission, "you know what the punishment is for lying. I wish you didn't make me do these things, but you have to learn."

 

He doesn't think he's been in here long, maybe two and half hours, not so long that he's lost his voice from screaming, because he prefers the beating and pain to this, anything besides being locked into this small, dark, enclosed space.

But the lid is being undone, and he's climbing out even before it's fully open. He trips, an arm comes around his waist, and he's clinging to someone who's male and familiar but he can't be bothered to care past that. Someone else hugs him from behind, female, and her forehead rests against the center of his back. This should be awful, should be triggering his claustrophobia, being cradled so tightly between two people. Instead, it's wonderful, two warm bodies with gentle hands murmuring soft nonsense at him, and after a few minutes he can even recognize the body wound around his and the voice in his ear as Scott's. Now he's got one arm around his waist and the other carding through his hair, and the girl behind him is rubbing circles into his hip bones.

"Better?" Scott ask, quiet, as if he were a scared animal.

He nods into Scott's neck, but doesn't take any move to start disentangling himself from the two of them because he can't remember when he's felt so safe. He takes huge breathes in an attempt to get his heart rate back to something normal, and they hurt his throat. He tries to cough to clear it, but it only makes it hurt worse and he thinks the girl kisses his shoulder and says, "Hey, sshhh, it's going to be okay."

Oh, it's Cory, that's who's holding him so tight. Somehow, that makes it okay, better, because Cory sometimes makes his pulse quicken, but then there's the other way she makes him feel. He'd managed what was probably nearly forty minutes in the freezer without screaming by thinking of Christmas Eve and morning, of curling up with her in under a too small blanket in her too small car, and he was wrong, that was the last time he'd felt safe.

"I'm okay," he says, and winces with how raspy he sounds. He pulls back, and they let him. He knows he's been crying, but he's a little surprised they have too. Their eyes are red, and the low curl of surprise and pleasure that they care enough to cry over him is a little bit twisted, but as far as he knows no one in their group is a mind reader yet.

Scott squeezes his shoulder, "Are you ready to go?"

"Go?" he repeats, "Where?"

He shrugs, "My house, Stiles's, the Hale's, anyone's really, besides here."

Isaac licks his lips, "Guys, I can't - it's better, really, if I stay."

Cory wraps her hand around his wrist, "You're coming with us, and you are never, ever coming back here as long as we have anything to say about it."

She doesn't usually remind him of Lydia, or Mrs. Hale, or anyone besides herself, but right now he sees the same determination in her that's Lydia's lifeblood, and he could fight it, if he wanted to, and he still probably wouldn't win, but he doesn't want to. Fight her, that is, or Scott, because leaving with them and never coming back sounds like everything he's always been too afraid to wish for.

They're on either side of him as they lead him out the house, and he doesn't understand why until he reaches the kitchen. His father is cowed a corner, Derek fully transformed and growling what's keeping his there. That's scary, sure, but he finds his gaze sliding to Stiles. He's leaning against the wall, arms crossed and face unreadable as he watches Derek. Isaac still doesn't really understand the relationship between the two of them, but he also doesn't think he's seen this side of it before. Derek's the older, stable one, the one that's always running after Stiles and trying to keep him in control.

Derek's growling like an attack dog, and Stiles is acting like he's the one who's holding the leash, with little inclination to use it. Isaac's never seen Derek with a temper, and he wonders if that's because he's always seen Derek with Stiles.

Stiles's eyes flicker to his, and soften for long enough to jerk his head to the door, and he doesn't know what the two of them are planning to do as soon as he leaves, but after everything, he's not sure he cares.

 

"He can take my room," Stiles says, all of them lazing around the Hales household while Peter hands out plates of pie, because apparently he's on a kick and wants testers and/or victims.

Isaac sputters, "I can't take your room!"

He shrugs, "Sure you can. I'll just move my shit into Derek's room, when I sleep here I usually sleep there anyway."

"Do I get a say in this?" Derek asks, although it comes out a bit garbled, and wow, is he so much less intimidating when his cheeks are stuffed with strawberry rhubarb.

"Nope. You've been breaking into my bedroom and sleeping in my bed for nearly four years. Turnabouts fair play." Derek grumbles, but that seems to be the only protest he feels the need to raise.

Isaac raises an eyebrow at Jackson, who shrugs and raises his eyes heavenward, and wow, he's learning almost all his questions regarding Stiles and Derek get that response, not questions about Stiles or Derek, just the two combined. "Are we sure that my dad isn't going to cause trouble about this, like accuse you of kidnapping or something?"

Stiles and Derek share a look that seems to be a smirk without any actual smirking being involved, "He won't be a problem."

"It's settled then," Peter hands Isaac a plate, and his smile looks like Cory's, "Welcome to the family. May the fates be with you."

Kevin throws his fork at his brother in law, and after that it devolved into what would be a food fight, if fully grown adults had food fights.  

 

The rest of the school year passes too quickly, getting used to living with the Hales, and wow, does Mrs. Hale push him even harder after that, it's no wonder that Stiles, Danny, and Jackson are star lacrosse players, with the type of training Mrs. Hale enforces.

"You know you'll probably make first string next year, right?" Danny says when he brings it up, and he doesn't know, so he sputters and changes the subject to the other boy's flavor of the week. Ever since Lyle dumped Cory for being 'unavailable' (apparently there's only so many times you can ditch your boyfriend for inexplicable supernatural reason before he flips his shit) she and Danny seem to be having a competition about how many pretty boyfriends they can have between them. Jackson tried to explain the scoring system to him once, quantity being all well and good but quality far worth the boost in points gained in the long run. He'd blinked at him in confusion before Jackson had sighed and put him in a headlock.

 Despite everything, he's still pulling a D in literature until Stiles find out, and then him and Derek pin him down, and wow, he has honestly never met a bigger pair of literature geeks in life, although Stiles does seem to harbor a special boner for Shakespeare.

Lydia and Cora force him to go shopping, and he comes back wearing clothes that fit and have color. He wouldn't have thought to much of it, except that when Cory sees him after, she stares for a good ten seconds before breaking out into a smile and saying, "You look really good, Isaac, I like it," and wow, he's as pathetic as Stiles was over Lydia in third grade.

What he does have to comfort him at night is that he's nowhere as pathetic over Cory as Derek is over Stiles. They can tout that high mage, re-inventor of magic shit all they want, Isaac has truly never met a person more ignorant or oblivious than Stiles Stillinski. Derek's studio is in the attic, and Isaac leans against the doorway, watches him work for a moment before he says, "Dinner's ready."

Derek startles, and his brushes clatter to the ground as he whirls around, guilty look already in place, "Isaac, I-"

"You're really good," he steps into the room, looks closer at the half finished painting of Stiles in the middle of canvas, and most of the body is done, although the background is only sketched out. It looks like he's been repainting Stiles eyes and lips enough that the paint around those areas are just slightly more raised than the rest of it.

Derek, relaxes just a little, still wary, and says, "Thanks."

"He hasn't seen these, has he?"

"He's seen my paintings," Derek says, not even bothering to misunderstand, "just not, not the ones of him. Don't tell him."

Isaac runs his hands over an unpainted part of the canvas, "I won't, although I'm sure he already knows. What wrong with the eyes?"

"They different now," and Isaac has to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the petulant frustration in the older man's voice, "Before, I'd gotten it right, I could do his eyes when he was happy, or sad, or pissed, or anything, really. But, these, when they're silver-," he's pretty sure Derek doesn't realize he shivers just then, and he's not going to be the one to tell him, "They have so much power. Stiles has always been powerful, laughably powerful, but now - now he's something else, a new strength."

Isaac shakes his head, "I don't know how he even - you talk like that around him, you know that right, and he still doesn't know. You could show him the way you paint him - there's no misunderstanding that." Derek paints Stiles like he's the sun, like everything revolves and evolves around him, like he sustains life as surely as the sun itself.

Derek narrows his eyes, "So how's my cousin doing?"

"Dinner, that's ready, right now, we should go," he answers promptly, because no, absolutely not.

Derek laughs as he cuffs him upside the head, hands still splattered with paint, but he can't bring himself to complain when the older man keeps his arm around his shoulders the entire walk to the kitchen.


End file.
